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Monday, March 7, 2011

We don't explore systems, we explore dungeons

Played Alpha Omega again last night. I think I had 3 attacks in the ~3 hour session. Two were successful. I spent most of the night flipping back and forth in the book trying to determine whether it was more cost effective to raise my skills or just raise my stats. There is some pleasure in this. It is almost the exact feeling I get when playing a video game for the first time. It's like poking around to feel the edges; what's possible, then, what's optimal.

With a video game I'll usually play for a bit finding out preliminary stuff, then start a new game utilizing my knowledge. Then I might start over again after trying a few more approaches. But if I'm not careful, I burn myself out and don't want to play the game again for a long time.

So, pleasurable. But this doesn't feel like an adventure game. The system is the game. What we do is secondary, as long as we get to try out our various skills and attack splitting strategies.

Oh, and jury's still out, but I think raising stats is the way to go. . . and melee weapons-- all ranged weapons get a big minus to hit.

That pic is unrelated (and public domain), but isn't it crazy? It's the party tag along.

@shlominus: Yeah, if the system isn't being upgraded or revised, you should eventually master it. I know that there have been a few video games where that was actually the point I stopped playing; I knew what was possible and what wasn't, I knew what was going to happen and achieving it became like a chore.

An rpg with humans can be different in that there are near infinite possible situations and locations to explore. But that doesn't change the fact that those things could be achieved with a vastly simpler system.

I can explain how a M-U in Swords & Wizardry works in 10 minutes. It will probably take a player several game sessions to grok basic strategy (When do I cast sleep? When do I run from combat?) With Alpha Omega what I'm seeing is, that the most knowledgeable player-- a former GM-- still can't play the game without referring to the rulebook and in fact being surprised by subsystems. And that seems to be the point-- He enjoys that.

And I think there is a place for that enjoyment of figuring out a system. In fact I've been scrambling to add a little more complexity to my game (orders, material components, spell research) because players seem to be craving more crunch to explore and toy with.

The problem is if that kind of enjoyment is mutually exclusive with the enjoyment of exploring situations and locations, which I think, at this Alpha Omega's level of system complexity, it does.

The problem is if that kind of enjoyment is mutually exclusive with the enjoyment of exploring situations and locations,

that's true of course.

I know that there have been a few video games where that was actually the point I stopped playing; I knew what was possible and what wasn't, I knew what was going to happen and achieving it became like a chore.